‘Rob’s a decent man,’ she says, for her own benefit as much as his. ‘Kind and generous.’
Jake bends down to stroke the cat. He’s kind and generous too, but it wasn’t enough in the end.
‘I just don’t know what’s happened to that person,’ she adds. ‘Where he’s gone.’
She’s determined not to cry, particularly in front of Jake.
‘It’s pretty hard to impersonate someone, you know,’ he says, straightening up and resting his hands on hers on the table between them. ‘You can’t just take over another person’s life, assume their identity and carry on as if nothing’s happened. It’s not that easy. Almost impossible, unless perhaps you’re an identical twin. And he hasn’t got one of those, has he.’
She shakes her head and withdraws her hands, wondering why she didn’t flinch when he first took them.
‘Dr Varma will know more,’ Jake says. ‘I’m no expert, but what you’re experiencing sounds remarkably like Capgras. This whole thing with the doubles – it must all be in your head. Must be.’
She turns away. It’s the first echo she’s heard of their old relationship. Jake used to think she imagined a lot of things, their lack of money, the leaks in the boat windows, her unhappiness. Maybe he thought she’d imagined his affair too, the one she saw with her own eyes on the cameras.
‘And this lookalike who met Rob on a beach in Thailand nine years ago – is he in my head too? You tell me – you’re the one Kirby poured his heart out to.’
She’s suddenly angry, struggling to keep her voice down. One false step and they seem to slip so easily into their bad old ways.
‘I’m just saying there’s likely to be a simple explanation for all this, that’s all.’
Jake was never one to raise his voice in return, always preferring to avoid conflict. It was Kate who did all the shouting.
‘I shouldn’t have come here,’ she says. Too many memories are flooding back and not all of them are great.
‘Why did you get off the train?’ he asks, glancing up at her.
They look at each other in silence. And then his eye is caught by something in the other room.
‘What is it?’ she asks, watching him walk through to check on Bex’s computer.
‘It’s probably nothing,’ he says, coming back into the kitchen and closing the door behind him. ‘The computer screen just came on, that’s all.’
But she can tell he’s worried.
‘Will you walk me back to the station?’ she asks.
It’s time she went to see Rob.
55
Silas
It’s as Silas is driving away from the station that he sees Kate and Jake strolling through the village, past the vegan café, now closed and boarded up. He slows beside them, opening his window. They made a good couple. Silas is sad that their relationship ended how it did. Guilty too.
‘I was going to call you, but I’ve got to head back to Swindon,’ he says to Kate. Jake looks a little sheepish standing beside her. The last time Silas spoke to him, it was about his hastily arranged boat insurance.
‘Did you see him?’ Kate asks.
‘No luck.’ Silas pauses. ‘Thanks for calling it in though. Like old times, eh?’
Kate turns away. Silas regrets the comment at once, wishes Strover were there to keep him in check. She’s going to ring Kate later, tell her about the matches for Rob that they’ve found around the world.
‘Want us to put some of those up in the village?’ Kate asks, nodding at a pile of laminated missing person posters on the passenger seat. Silas has already tied one onto the metal railings down at the station.
‘Would you?’ he says. ‘I’m out of time.’
‘Sure.’ Kate takes a couple and passes one to Jake.
‘Maybe in the pub? Post office?’ Silas suggests, but Jake is still staring at the image of Conor.
‘I’ve seen him,’ Jake says. ‘In the village yesterday. Down by the water meadow.’
‘Really?’ Silas glances at Kate. Her own sighting suddenly seems more credible.
Jake looks at Silas, as if he’s contemplating whether to tell him something. ‘By the crossing,’ he says. ‘Waiting for a train.’
‘And what happened?’ Silas can hardly bear to hear the answer.
‘The train came and I pulled him out the way.’ Jake says the words quietly, no suggestion of heroics on his part.
‘You didn’t tell me any of this,’ Kate says, turning to Jake.
Jake shrugs. ‘We went for a walk afterwards, up in the woods. I left him there.’ He pauses, studying the photo again. ‘Is this really your son?’
Silas nods.
‘We need to talk.’
56
Kate
‘I’m so sorry about the boat,’ Kate says to Jake as the train draws up at the platform. They haven’t discussed where he might live. They haven’t talked about a lot of things.
‘Thanks for coming,’ he says, avoiding eye contact.
‘Thanks for the dress,’ she says.
She’s folded it up in a separate plastic bag, to stop the smell of diesel from infecting her other clothes.
‘You’ll feel better once you’ve seen Dr Varma,’ he says, looking at her.
‘Rob first,’ she says, trying to sound upbeat.
She rang Rob after they met DI Hart in the high street, told him that she’d changed onto the wrong train at Exeter and would now be arriving an hour later. That suited Rob better, he said, as, predictably, he was running behind with work.
‘It’ll be fine,’ Jake says. ‘And that beach-bum Gil in Thailand? I bet he looks nothing like Rob these days.’
Jake is always full of optimism. It’s what did for them in the end, blinded him to the reality of their circumstances.
‘Wait, there’s something else I saved from the boat,’ he says as she boards the train. In his big hand is a tiny paintbrush, a kolinsky. It was a present from him when she was struggling with a difficult portrait. At the time she knew they couldn’t afford it and she’d been cross with him.
‘I hope you’re painting again,’ he says.
‘I am.’ She takes the brush as the door closes and mouths the words, ‘Thank you.’
But Jake is distracted, looking down the platform. She presses the button and the doors open again.
‘What is it?’ she asks, peering out of the door.
‘Ah, just some late-runner cutting it fine,’ he says.
‘You’d know all about that.’
Jake always used to leave it until the last minute when he was a commuter, jogging down the towpath, waving at the train driver to wait for him.
They smile at each other and the doors close.
57
Silas
‘He was standing over there, by the kissing gate,’ Jake says, pointing across the water meadow towards the railway track.
Silas takes in the scene, trying to imagine what was in Conor’s head as he waited for the train to come. Was he full of anger towards Silas? Maybe even guilt? Silas is flattering himself. If Conor’s drug-soaked brain was thinking of anyone other than himself, it would have been his mum. They were always close. He will have to tell her that their only son nearly took his own life. And he will be blamed.